Politics & Power Quote by Arthur Kroker

Kroker turns Elvis into astrophysics to make a cultural diagnosis feel inevitable. The image isn’t “Elvis is fading” so much as “America is collapsing in a way you can still see, briefly, as spectacle.” An event horizon is the last threshold before information is lost; it flashes only because something is being consumed. By calling Elvis’ disappearing body that flash, Kroker frames celebrity as our final readable signal before the national story slips into a gravity well of its own making.

The “body” matters because Elvis was always a bodily project: Southern sensuality repackaged for mass consumption, then literally enlarged, medicated, and monetized. His later-life vanishing acts (death, impersonators, endless revival) become a template for how America processes decline: turn it into a show, sell it as nostalgia, repeat until the original is unrecoverable. The disappearance isn’t absence; it’s a system of substitutions.

Kroker’s subtext is a jab at an America that experiences itself through mediated images rather than politics or community. Elvis is both icon and casualty of the same engine: race-borrowing turned mainstream product, individual charisma turned corporate franchise, desire turned brand loyalty. The “black hole” isn’t just decadence; it’s acceleration. Once you’re close enough, even critique gets pulled in and repurposed as content.

In classic postmodern-provocation mode, Kroker writes like someone pointing at the fireworks while reminding you they’re also the warning flare.